Virginia Woolf, Trousers (1921)
Review of A. Trystan Edwards, The Things Which Are Seen (1921), New Statesman, 2 June 1921.
If the readers of the New Statesman will buy Mr Edwards’ book they will hear of something to their advantage. They will learn that though they have always been accustomed to think themselves average men they are, by very reason of that fact, the only judges of art. Not only are they the only judges; they are the only creators. for the average man can cultivate his appearance, and that is the first of the arts; he can behave like a gentleman, and that is the second; he can dress well, and that is the third. The architect, the painter and the sculptor, though admitted among the minor artists, cannot compete with the man or woman who, divinely beautiful, exquisitely tactful, and superbly attired, practises the three major arts to perfection.
But our proficiency in the art of being beautiful is much determined by the accidents of birth. At this point we find Mr Edwards consoling, if not entirely convincing. ‘Noses straight, aquiline or retroussé may so harmoniously be set up on the face that they are neither insignificant nor yet obtrusive … one man may have rather thin legs, add another man rather thick legs, and both may be possessed of a good figure.’ There is only one physical defect which is completely damning and that is bow legs. ‘Bow legs are an abomination. The reason is that, being arranged in two equal and opposite curves enclosing a space, they create at about the level of the knees where the space is widest a marked focal centre’ - short, the bow-legged are inevitably ill-bred; no one can help looking at their legs, and discord and rebellion result. The parents of the bow-legged, M. Edwards is of opinion, ‘ought to be visited with a severe penalty.’
Nevertheless, however scurvily Nature may have behaved, you can temper her severity (short of bow legs) by attention to the art of manners. Much can be done by grace of posture. You should be careful not to open the jaws widely, smack the lips, or expose the contents of the mouth in eating. Unless it is to amuse a baby, do not pretend to be a horse, for to walk on all fours ‘without humorous intent’ is to display ‘the ultimate degree of bad manners to which it is possible to attain’.
But the shortest survey of Mr Edwards’ book must not fail to point out that besides laying down the law the author is at great pains to ascertain what that law is. Owing to native obtuseness, no doubt, we have been unable to grasp the grammar of design, although Mr. Edwards has been to nature herself to discover it, and is confident that our assent will be complete and instantaneous ‘because the law of mind has an intimate connection with the law of nature, and it is impossible to acknowledge the one without paying an equal difference to the other.’ In spite of diagrams of feet, hands, eyes, noses, ships and houses, many of his statements seemed to us controversial, and some highly obscure. We will only mention the principle of resolved duality. ‘Nature’, says Mr Edwards, ‘does not tolerate duality.’ The hands differ; so do the eyes. But when Mr Edwards goes on to assert that trousers, owing to ‘the irremediable effect of duality, ‘seem to invite disrespect’, we entirely dissent. We go further. We have conceived them in isolation from the jacket, as advised, and still see nothing to laugh at in trousers. As for the final and most striking example of duality resolved, to wit, the Holy Trinity, the questions which Mr Edwards decides are too grave to be touched on in a review. We need only say that the origin of the Holy Ghost, long the subject of dispute among theologians, is now accounted for – quite simply, too.
Virginia Woolf, review of A. Trystan Edwards, The Things Which Are Seen (1921), New Statesman, 2 June 1921. Reprinted in Woolf, Collected Essays, vol. 3, 312-14.
We study Freedom of Thought in Woolf’s Essays in our current Virginia Woolf Season, Saturday 6 April 2024, with Beth Rigel Daugherty. Further information.
